Brian Otskey is the Big East correspondent for RTC and a regular contributor. You can find him @botskey on Twitter. See bottom of the post for the Official RTC Star System.

While BracketBusters is always solid, the overall slate over the next few days is full of good, but not great, games. Still, tune in to these games as conference races head down the stretch and the NCAA Tournament field begins to take shape.

#13 St. Mary’s at #24 Murray State – 6:00 PM EST Saturday on ESPN (****)

• Since losing to Tennessee State, Murray State has rebounded with two wins over Austin Peay and Southeast Missouri State. On Saturday night the Racers will get their chance to show the nation they are for real. Playing at home in front of a juiced up crowd on national television, there is no excuse for Murray State to come out anything less than fired up. The three point line is this team’s best friend on both ends of the floor and it will be important against St. Mary’s. Murray State shoots 41% from deep (#8 nationally) and defends the arc very well. Against a St. Mary’s team that ranks a putrid #305 against the triple, that’s a huge advantage for the Racers at home. Steve Prohm should do everything in his power to ensure Isaiah Canaan (47.3%) and Donte Poole(39.3%) get quality shots from the arc against the porous Gaels’ defense. Defensively, the Racers must lock down the arc as they usually do. St. Mary’s shoots a lot of threes and while they don’t make a great percentage they do get just a shade under 30% of their total points from the arc.
  

  Isaiah Canaan And Company Could Have A Big Day From Behind The Arc Against St. Mary's Average 3-Point Defense (Getty)

• St. Mary’s has lost two of its last three games after starting the season 22-2. The Gaels are still a likely NCAA Tournament team, but a win here would ensure their place in the field of 68 for sure. In order to win on the road in a tough environment against a good team, St. Mary’s must use its edge on the offensive glass, make threes and get to the foul line. With strong rebounders like Rob Jones and Brad Waldow, St. Mary’s has a clear size edge over Murray State. Only Ivan Aska and Ed Daniel see significant minutes for the Racers inside, two of only three players on the roster who are at least 6’7” tall. While the Gaels have a huge edge inside, they’re going to have to overcome Murray State’s strong perimeter defense. Matthew Dellavedova and Clint Steindl are going to have to hit threes for Randy Bennett’s team to come out on top. Thirdly, St. Mary’s should look to take advantage of a Murray State defense that ranks in the bottom half of Division I in defensive free throw rate. The Gaels get to the line fairly well and make 71.9% of their free throws. It’s so important to control tempo and keep the crowd out of the game and getting to the charity stripe while controlling the boards definitely helps in achieving that goal.
• This should be a very close game but the edge has to go to the home team. St. Mary’s is struggling a bit right now and Murray State seems to have righted the ship since suffering its first loss. One concern for the Racers is their turnovers (14 per game). If Murray State controls the ball, plays well on the perimeter and gets to the free throw line at its usual clip, this will be the Racers’ game to lose.

Evan Jacoby is a regular contributor for RTC. You can find him @evanjacoby on Twitter. 

What is and what isn’t against the NCAA law these days? The line between a ‘good deed’ and a ‘violation’ has become so thin that not even the original lawmakers are able to easily distinguish the difference. And coaches in fierce competition for recruits? Forget about it. There are so many minor rules about extensive contact that it is impossible to police every one of them. That’s why the NCAA is finally working to create a slimmer and more efficient rulebook to make it easier for all parties to follow the rules. We certainly love the thought of trimming down the book, but it will not be an easy task.

The NCAA Rulebook is Far Too Complex to Consistently Enforce

“It’s very complicated to take a 400-plus-page rule book and shrink it down to something sensible, but we’re going to do it,” said NCAA President Mark Emmert last month. The most meaningful idea changes being discussed include making all transfers eligible to play immediately during the next semester rather than having to sit out a full year at their new school. The transfer rule has been noted as unfair for players, considering that coaches are allowed to bolt from school to school whenever they see more money or a better opportunity, but student-athletes need a waiver signed by the school and are required to sit out a full year before they can even join a new team. Another idea being discussed is to allow coaches to talk publicly about unsigned recruits since Twitter and other social media have made it so difficult to track everything being mentioned publicly. It’s unclear if public discussion would even have an influence on recruits’ decisions.

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1. If you are in the group of people who does not pay for cable television and planned to watch the NCAA Tournament on CBS and March Madness on Demand you may be out of luck. In an announcement yesterday, Turner Sports announced that they would be charging a staggering $3.99 for online access to their games. While this initially caused a few moments of unease online (since you know everything should be given away to the public for free) it is even less burdensome than it seems as those who have TBS, TNT, and TruTV from their cable provider will be able to gain access to the games online for free through the channel’s website by proving that they have the channel on their home cable package although how you will do that is a little unclear. The games that are broadcast on CBS will continue to be provided free of charge.
2. In this week’s edition of his power rankings Luke Winn takes a look at all aspects of how Anthony Davis blocks shots, the role of Fab Melo on defense, and the usual other statistical nuggets that he always brings us. We usually spare Luke of any criticism (mostly because he usually does not deserve it), but we are perplexed with his ranking of New Mexico as he has them as the #16 team in his rankings, which seems pretty lofty except that he had them at #12 before they won at San Diego State. We understand that he moved four other teams up quite a bit, but the reason/justification for the drop at least merits a mention.
3. We have seen a lot of strange coaching moves in the past few months, but the announcement that Mount St. Mary’s was putting Robert Burke on paid administrative leave per his request is one of the more odd ones. A school official citing university policy refused to release any more information about the leave. Since the school and Burke are not providing any information, the rest of us are left to speculate on what the reason is (assuming you want to spend that time thinking about a NEC team that is 6-19 overall), but the most likely (and least libelous) reason is the on-court performance of the team as Burke is 17-40 since taking over during the 2009-10 season.
4. Remember our link yesterday talking about how some conferences will need to merge or expand to survive? Apparently, new Sun Belt Conference commissioner Karl Benson got the memo because when he was announced as the incoming commissioner yesterday he immediately began discussing plans to expand the conference. Benson declined to name any specific targets, but it would seem like needs to act quickly as his conference has schools located in the southeastern United States from Florida to Texas making them prime targets for other conferences looking to get into or consolidate that market.
5. Ever since Nerlens Noel reclassified to this year’s graduating class, the interest around his recruitment has grown exponentially. The 6’10” center, who will probably end up being the #1 recruit in this year’s class when the final rankings are released, went on-air with Jeff Goodman yesterday to discuss his list of schools, which were (in no particular order) Kentucky, Connecticut, Syracuse, North Carolina, Providence, Florida, and Georgetown. [Ed. Note: He initially did not mention Providence, but tweeted a clarification soon after the show.] Much like Shabazz Muhammad, the other player in the running for #1 overall recruit, Noel does not appear to be in any hurry to announce where he will be going so we could be waiting for a while.

Evan Jacoby is a regular contributor for RTC. You can find him @evanjacoby on Twitter. 

Think back to November 24, when many teams were playing in early-season tournaments and fans were able to get a strong first glimpse of their favorite teams. Notre Dame got plenty of exposure that week, but for all the wrong reasons. The Fighting Irish had just incurred a 29-point beating at the hands of Missouri in the CBE Classic semifinals and followed that performance up with a loss to Georgia in the third place game. The next day, star senior forward Tim Abromaitis suffered a torn ACL in practice that would immediately end his season and seemingly the team’s too. If you told a Notre Dame fan back then that three months later their team would be 10-3 in conference on a seven-game winning streak in the Big East, it would be truly hard to believe. For that, and many other reasons, Irish head coach Mike Brey is the current leader in the clubhouse for National Coach of the Year once again as we head into the home stretch of the regular season.

Things Are Looking Good for Mike Brey, Who Just Might Win Another Coach of the Year Award (AP Photo)

Brey has been named Big East Coach of the Year three times (’07, ’08, ’11), and was the AP National Coach of the Year last season for guiding his team to an unexpected run at 27-7, an NCAA Tournament 2-seed and #5 overall ranking when the season ended. Coach Brey also has a habit of making a splash with his team in conference play when it looks like it has no chance to be competitive. Think back to two seasons ago, when the Fighting Irish were sitting at 6-8 in the Big East on a crash course for the NIT before Brey led the team to four straight victories to end the regular season. Then came a deep run in the Big East Tournament, and Luke Harangody, Ben Hansbrough, Abromaitis, and company were safely in the NCAA field, from NIT to 6-seed in just three weeks. The head coach in South Bend doesn’t get the same kind of recognition as some of his conference coaching peers like Jim Boeheim, Jim Calhoun, and Rick Pitino, but Brey has often done as fine a job as them with far less talent to work with.

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Brendon Mulvihill is an RTC contributor. You can find him @themulv on Twitter. See bottom of the post for the Official RTC Star System.

The Big Ten is down to a four-team race. Two of the contenders go head-to-head tonight in what could be an elimination game for one of them. Over in the Big East, the Backyard Brawl does not have the luster it has had in the past few season, it’s still a must watch game for hoops fans.

Jordan Taylor needs to have his best game of the season tonight.

#19 Wisconsin at #5 Michigan State – 7:00PM EST on ESPN HD (****)

• While this game is big for both teams, it is particularly important for the Badgers. If the Badgers cannot upset the Spartans on the road, they will be effectively eliminated from the Big Ten regular season race. They will be two games back with a pending date against Ohio State on the road later in the month. Wisconsin has struggled mightily on the offensive end during Big Ten play. They face a Spartan defense that has allowed teams to shoot only 27.9% from beyond the arc and 42.9% from inside of it. The Badgers are no slouches on defense by any stretch. Only one team has shot over 50% eFG against them the entire season. However, they simply will not be able to rely solely on their defense in this game. Keep a close eye on who steps up for the Badgers on offense. Senior Jordan Taylor needs to step up in a big way for the Badgers to have any chance whatsoever to win tonight.
• Michigan State is undefeated at the Breslin Center this season and seems to be peaking on defense at the right time. The Spartans held Ohio State to a season-low 28.3% eFG last Saturday, on the road. Michigan State will find it difficult to hit shots against the tough Badger defense, as they did against an equally tough Ohio State defense. However, their defense will be the difference maker once again.
• Wisconsin’s chances of pulling off the upset sit squarely with their offense. To this point in the Big Ten season, they have shown very little reason to believe their offense will be able to breakthrough on the road against a fantastic defense. Michigan State will prove to be too difficult to crack in the Breslin Center.

1. In this week’s mailbag, which seems kind of short without his usual filler, Seth Davis takes a look at the panic surrounding Ohio State, the future of Connecticut in the post-Calhoun era, the immediate future for Bruce Weber and Illinois, and a couple other topics. As usual we agree with pretty much everything Seth says (or he agrees with what we have said before on this site). In particular, the Huskies could be in for a very rough stretch after Calhoun leaves as we mentioned more than two years ago.
2. Looking for analysis using advanced statistics from AAU basketball to predict how high school players project in college? If the answer is yes, then we have the link for you. Drew Cannon is continuing his prior work by looking at some of the top prospects from EYBL. We are not sure how much we trust the predictive value of these stats in what amounts to high school all-star games where fundamentals are hard to find, but it is worth keeping an eye on whether these statistics track out to actual on-court performance as college players.
3. With the regular season winding down, the noise surrounding national awards is beginning to intensify. The biggest award is obviously national player of the year and right now it looks like it is a two-horse race between Anthony Davis and Thomas Robinson. Unless one of those players falls apart down the stretch we suspect that the various national awards will be split between those two, but the question is which one will receive the majority of accolades. According to Michael Rothstein’s straw poll, Robinson appears to have a fairly comfortable lead. While there are a few interesting choices (read: homer picks), it is interesting that seven of the 54 voters polled did not include Davis in their top 3, which is surprising for the best player on the #1 team in the country. We are guessing that at least a few of the voters have not watched Davis in action on the defensive end where his effect appears to outweigh his individual statistical impact.
4. Yesterday, we discussed the impact of the Conference USA/Mountain West merger and how it would have relatively little impact on the rest of the landscape of college athletics as it was merely an attempt to survive. Dan Wolken goes further with that point by saying that it was driven by “pure, unadulterated fear” and that conference realignment will eventually bring about other similar moves that do not appear to make much sense on the surface, but are really just moves made to survive while the big fish continue to suck up more of the resources of the college sports ecosystem.
5. Joe Nocera has decided to continue his personal crusade against the NCAA despite the organization’s recent attempt to discredit his work, which is admittedly biased. This week he has decided to take a look at the issue of agents in college sports through the prism of college hockey, which allows players to have professional agents. Hockey is obviously a different animal than basketball in that many of its top players bypass college completely choosing instead to play in a variety of leagues that essentially amount to the minor leagues while hoping to make it to the NHL. Still the issues that Nocera brings up in the article are good ones and if we have any college hockey fans in our audience who are familiar with the workings of agents and its rules relating to amateurism we would love to hear what you think about it compared to how college basketball operates.

Evan Jacoby is a regular contributor for RTC. You can find him @evanjacoby on Twitter. Night Line will run on weeknights during the season, highlighting a major storyline development from that day’s games.

In a two-day span, the entire complexion of the Mountain West conference has changed. Those who don’t think that’s a big deal should consider that the MW is actually the fifth strongest league in the country according to cumulative conference RPI, ranking above both the Pac-12 (no surprise there) and the ACC. It appeared as if UNLV was the team to beat in this league, but a shocking loss to TCU on Tuesday night left the door open for the winner of Wednesday’s showdown between the other two top competitors to get a leg up in the race. New Mexico wound up victorious in this matchup, winning at Viejas Arena over No. 18 San Diego State to add a huge road win to its resume and move into sole possession of first place in the conference. The Lobos host UNLV at home this weekend in the final matchup between the Mountain West’s ‘big three’ teams, and a win in The Pit will make the title race theirs to lose. The only MW team of the three that’s not currently ranked in any top 25 poll, Steve Alford‘s squad may actually be the most complete team of the bunch.

Steve Alford's Lobos are Rising to the Top of the Mountain West Conference (AP Photo/I. Brekken)

Wednesday night was a revenge victory for the Lobos, who were thoroughly beaten by San Diego State in Albuquerque back on January 18. New Mexico returned the favor by jumping out to an early lead and extending it to double digits in the second half to a point where the home team could not mount a big enough comeback. Shockingly, the Lobos got it done this time while seeing nothing from their top playmaking guard, Tony Snell, who was held scoreless in the game after he had only scored three points in their first matchup. But that’s what separated these two teams on this night — SDSU got virtually nothing from its top guard Chase Tapley, and the Aztec offense completely stalled for long stretches. New Mexico, meanwhile, was just fine without Snell as their other stars shined and a multitude of other players added important contributions. UNM certainly proved that they were the deeper and more complete team on Wednesday night.

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Can Rutgers give the red-hot Irish a run for their money in South Bend tonight? We’ll find out on RTC Live from the Joyce Center…

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Evan Jacoby is a regular contributor for RTC. You can find him @evanjacoby on Twitter. 

The Fighting Illini may be playing for more than just their NCAA Tournament lives in the next three weeks. Multiple news outlets continue to speculate that Bruce Weber’s tenure as Illinois head coach may also be on shaky ground. Illinois was ranked in the Top 25 one month ago after knocking off Ohio State at home, and it looked like the team’s young talent was starting to come together. But since that game, the Illini are back in a familiar struggling position, having lost six of their last seven. Pressure continues to mount on Weber to turn this talented team around in a hurry, something he has been unable to do for several consecutive seasons. Tonight’s home game against Purdue is crucial for the coach to put the team in position to make a late-season run.

Bruce Weber is Firmly on the Hot Seat; How Will his Team Respond? (AP Photo/M. Conroy)

Illinois won consecutive Big Ten titles in Weber’s first two years at the helm in 2003-04 and 2004-05, and the ’05 team that advanced to the National Championship game before losing a close game to North Carolina was one of the decade’s best teams. But Weber has never been able to build on that initial success and the players that got him to the Final Four were Bill Self’s recruits from the previous regime. Self’s winning percentage from 2000-03 was .765 compared to Weber’s .688 in the nine years since, which includes the Final Four run with a 34-2 team. Since that title game appearance, Weber’s teams are 60-56 in the Big Ten and 2-4 in the NCAA Tournament.

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Since last season’s national championship game speculation about the upcoming retirement of Jim Calhoun (and we all know it is coming sooner rather than later) has been running rampant. Calhoun decided to come back to coach what looked like a loaded defending champion, despite having to sit out the first three games of Big East play due to a suspension and the looming possibility that the 2013 Connecticut team would be unable to play in the NCAA Tournament because of the low APR scores of their predecessors. When the Huskies got off to a slower than expected start many chalked it up to a young but talented team figuring out how to play without Walker dominating the ball. As the team’s mediocre play continued, it was assumed that while this UConn team would not be a dominant one like Calhoun’s first two championship teams it still had the talent and most importantly Calhoun to make a run in March. Now it looks like the latter may not be the case.

Will Calhoun Walk Away?

When Calhoun announced earlier this month that he is dealing with spinal stenosis, which had been diagnosed this past summer, and that he would take an indefinite medical leave of absence to deal with worsening symptoms and to figure out if he would undergo surgery or proceed with conservative management, most media members assumed that Calhoun, one of the tougher individuals you will ever meet, would put off the surgery to have one last run in the NCAA Tournament. If Calhoun opts for conservative treatment, the symptoms of spinal stenosis are classically improved by sitting (something that can be hard to do if you watch this UConn team play), so it would not seem like he would be putting himself any significant risk by returning to sidelines if he can try to be a little less animated than usual. However, it has been almost two weeks since Calhoun announced that he was taking a medical leave of absence and the news out of Storrs keeps getting worse as the most recent information is that Calhoun will be out at least the next three games, which means that he would not return to coach a game until February 25 at the earliest.

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